Standing up for Nature
The paperback of A Message from Martha is out on 24 September: it has the same words, a lower price and a slightly different cover. Today is the 101st anniversary of the extinction of the most numerous bird on Earth. In the last year have we moved closer to saving the world’s biodiversity? Not much,…
I’ll be talking to the Northants Bird Club tomorrow evening (Wednesday 2 September) at The Fishing Lodge at Pitsford Reservoir, just outside the village of Holcot on the Brixworth road (NN6 9SJ). Kick off is at 7.30pm. I guess I’ll talk about Hen Harriers and why we should ban driven grouse shooting mostly! But I’ll…
Born in East Anglia, but raised in the Arabian Gulf, Ed Hutchings was always going to have two things – itchy feet and an inquisitive mind. After leaving university with a degree in hospitality, he embarked on a career as a sommelier for a decade, working at various Michelin-star restaurants; in the process winning the…
Natural England has been carrying out a Hen Harrier study with radio-tagged and satellite-tagged Hen Harriers for years and years (since 2002 in fact). It formed part of the basis for the excellent NE report (A Future for Hen Harriers in England? which was published under a Labour government in 2008). Natural England has been…
Natural England would like your views on moving Water Voles for development purposes. This damn nature sure gets in the way, doesn’t it?
It’s just as illegal to kill a Buzzard as it is to kill a Hen Harrier. Satellite-tagging a lot of Buzzards, particularly in areas close to driven grouse moors would, I bet, lead to a lot of interesting information about Buzzard movements and survival, and also lead to some interesting ‘disappearances’ which could be…
When Henry was at the Bird Fair last weekend he had a satellite tag fitted to him. You can see that the tag correctly located Henry in Rutland, and correctly located him at the right end of Rutland Water, and correctly mapped his flights around the Bird Fair marquees. You can see how detailed…
Oscar writes: While I was at Minsmere walking around the scrape one morning another photographer pointed out a family of Linnets that he’d been photographing. The parents were gathering food and then feeding the recently-fledged chicks on the path so I lay down and started crawling closer. Before long the adult male returned and was…
I’ll be chatting about driven grouse shooting at the Ilkley Literary festival on Saturday 10 October. It would be good to see a few friendly faces as I venture into grouse shooting country. This does mean that I will miss the RSPB AGM on the same day in London (for the first time for well…
Stunning images of insects. This book is stuffed full of them. Stick insects, beautiful caterpillars, lacewings, wasps, mosquitoes – all are photographed in perfect detail. And the point of the book is that they are caught as eggs and in various stages of development, as well as as adults. I knew a bit about ant…